1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a printing method, a printing apparatus, and a medium.
2. Related Art
A lot of color printers capable of rendering a plurality of colors are in use. Such a color printer carries out color calibration to improve color reproducibility. In executing color calibration, a test pattern for color calibration is printed. Then, the test pattern is measured to acquire a measured value in color space, and deviation of colors to be output by the printer is compensated based on the result of the measurement.
JP-A-2010-201845 is an example of related art.
A plurality of patches whose gray-scale values are varied are formed on the test pattern for each of colors used in the printer. A compensation value for each color is acquired based on the results of reading the gray-scale values of the patches. When the patch size is made smaller in such a test pattern, reading the gray-scale value of the patch is influenced by the color around the patch (e.g., white color of a sheet), preventing accurate reading of the gray-scale value. When measurement is carried out with an optical sensor, in particular, it is difficult to achieve highly accurate measurement. When the patch size is increased, on the other hand, the entire area of a test pattern becomes larger, undesirably increasing the print area.